Where GATE DA's marks have come from

This post sets out where the marks in the three GATE DA papers held so far have come from, for a candidate planning the subject part of a study plan. As the GATE 2027 Information Brochure sets out on printed page 4, every paper has 65 questions and 100 marks. In DA, General Aptitude is 15 marks and sits outside the subject syllabus. The other 85 marks are subject questions. DA has no separate Engineering Mathematics block. Its mathematics is part of its own syllabus: Probability and Statistics, Linear Algebra, and Calculus and Optimization are sections 1, 2 and 3. We placed each question under a subject and topic ourselves; the exam paper does not label them.

Where GATE DA's 85 subject marks have come from, paper by paper

The 85 subject marks are the same in each paper, but they have been spread differently. Probability and Statistics rose in every paper, from 15 marks in 2024 to 19 in 2025 and 21 in 2026. Database Management and Warehousing also rose in every paper, from 7 to 11 to 18. Data Structures and Algorithms had 20 marks in 2024 and 14 in each of the next two papers. Machine Learning stayed close to one level, with 15, 14 and 14. Linear Algebra had 10, 12 and 8. Artificial Intelligence had 10, 6 and 8. Calculus and Optimization had 8 and 9 marks in the first two papers and 2 in 2026.

GATE DA subjects in order of average marks per paper

By average marks per paper, the order runs Probability and Statistics (18.3), Data Structures and Algorithms (16.0), Machine Learning (14.3), Database Management and Warehousing (12.0), Linear Algebra (10.0), Artificial Intelligence (8.0) and Calculus and Optimization (6.3). A plan that follows the average marks would take Probability and Statistics, Data Structures and Algorithms, Machine Learning, Database Management and Warehousing, Linear Algebra, Artificial Intelligence and Calculus and Optimization, in that order. Database Management and Warehousing had 18 marks in 2026, more than Data Structures and Algorithms or Machine Learning had in that paper, so an order by the latest paper alone would differ. The ranges differ in width. Machine Learning stayed between 14 and 15 marks, while Database Management and Warehousing ran from 7 to 18 and Calculus and Optimization from 2 to 9. Three papers is a short record.

The GATE DA topics that have carried the most marks

Programming in Python carried the most marks of any topic: 18 marks across 10 questions, with 6, 5 and 7 marks in the three papers. It belongs to the study subject Data Structures and Algorithms, which GATE CS shares with DA. DA's Section 4 is titled "Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms", and its programming is in Python. Next come continuous random variables and the named distributions with 15 marks, random variables, expectation and variance with 14, and projection, orthogonal, idempotent and partitioned matrices, and quadratic forms with 13. Linear discriminant analysis, support vector machines and decision trees and searching, sorting and hashing have 11 marks each. Eleven of the twelve topics in the table had marks in all three papers. The exception is limits, continuity and differentiability, which had 5 marks in 2024, 4 in 2025 and none in 2026. In all, 19 topics had marks in every one of the three papers, among them propositional and predicate logic, search, graphs, normal forms and neural networks.

The GATE DA syllabus, section by section, and its study subjects

Each of the seven sections of the official GATE 2027 DA syllabus has a study subject of its own, so each subject count above covers one syllabus section. Data Structures and Algorithms, and Database Management and Warehousing, each hold questions from GATE CS as well. The counts in this post are the DA questions in those two subjects only; their subject pages also carry the GATE CS questions.